Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks / Adapted to the Present State of Great Britain

by Edward Wortley Montagu

At the expiration of the truce, which was made for one year only, the Latins took the field with a powerful army. Aulus Posthumius was created dictator by the Romans, and a decisive battle was fought near the lake Regillus, in which the Romans were completely victors. Sextus Tarquin was killed upon the spot, and old Tarquin the father died soon after. As soon as this war was ended, the senate, regardless of their promise, ordered all those suits for debt to be determined according to law, which had been suspended during the war. This faithless proceeding raised such violent commotions amongst the people, that a foreign war was judged the best expedient to divert the storm which threatened the aristocracy. The haughty Appius Claudius, and Publius Servilius, a man of a very different character, were nominated consuls by Posthumius and his colleague, which seems a manifest invasion of the rights of the people.[252] A war was resolved upon against the Volscians, but the Plebeians again refused to obey the summons for enlisting. Servilius adhered to the maxims of Valerius, and advised an immediate decree for the abolition of the debts. But he was furiously opposed by the inexorable Appius,[253] who called him a flatterer of the people, and declared that it would be giving up the government to the people when they had it in their power to live under an aristocracy. After much time was spent in these debates, Servilius, who was a popular man, prevailed upon the Plebeians, by his entreaties, and raised an army of volunteers, with which he marched against the enemy. The Volscians, who placed their chief dependance upon the disunion which prevailed amongst the Romans, submitted to whatever terms the consul should think proper to impose, and delivered three hundred hostages chosen out of their principal families, as a security for their behaviour. But this submission was far from real, and was calculated only to amuse the Romans and gain time for their military preparations. War was once more decreed against the Volscians; but whilst the senate was deliberating about the number of the forces proper to be employed, a man advanced in years appeared in the forum and implored the assistance of the people. Famine sat pictured in his pale and meagre face,[254] and the squalid hue of his dress indicated the extremes of poverty and wretchedness. This man, who was not unknown to the people, and, according to report, had borne a command in the army, first showed several honourable scars in his breast, remains of the wounds he had received in the service of his country, and then informed them: “that he had been present in eight and twenty battles, and frequently received rewards bestowed only upon superior bravery: that in the Sabine war his cattle were driven off by the enemy, his estate plundered, and his house reduced to ashes: that under these unhappy circumstances he was compelled to borrow money to pay the publick taxes; that this debt, accumulated by usury, reduced him to the sad necessity of selling the estate descended to him from his ancestors, with what little effects he had remaining: but that all this proving insufficient, his devouring debts, like a wasting consumption, had attacked his person, and he, with his two sons, were delivered up as slaves, and led away to the slaughterhouse by his creditors.” When he had said this, he threw off his rags, and showed his back yet bleeding from the scourge of his merciless master. This sight inflamed the people greatly, but the debtors breaking out of their creditor’s houses, most of whom were loaded with chains and fetters, raised their fury even to madness. If any one desired them to take up arms in defence of their country, the debtors showed their chains,[255] as the reward they had met with for their past services, and asked with indignation, whether such blessings were worth fighting for. Whilst numbers of them openly declared that it was much more eligible to be slaves to the Volscians than the Patricians. The senate, quite disconcerted by the violence of the tumult, entreated Servilius to take the management of the people. For an express was just arrived from the Latins, with advice that a numerous army of the enemy had already entered their territories. Servilius remonstrated to the people the consequences of disunion at so critical a juncture, and pacified them by the assurance that the senate would confirm whatever concessions he should make; he then ordered the crier to proclaim that no citizen who voluntarily enlisted should be subject to the demands or insults of his creditors whilst the army continued in the field. The people now flocked in with cheerfulness, and the levies were soon completed. Servilius took the field and defeated the Volscians, made himself master of their camp, took several of their cities, and divided the whole plunder amongst his soldiers. At the news of this success the sanguinary Appius ordered all the Volscian hostages to be brought into the forum,[256] there to be whipped and publickly beheaded. And when at his return Servilius demanded a triumph, he loudly opposed it, called him a factious man, and accused him of defrauding the treasury of the booty, and prevailed upon the senate to deny him that honour. Servilius, enraged at this usage, entered the city in triumph with his army, amidst the acclamations of the people, to the great mortification of the Patricians.

Under the following consulship the Sabines prepared to invade the Romans, and the people again refused to serve unless the debts were first abolished. Lartius, the first dictator, pleaded strongly for the people, but the inflexible Appius proposed the nomination of a dictator, as the only remedy against the mutiny. His motion was carried in the senate by a majority of voices, and Manius Valerius, a brother to the great Poplicola, was created dictator. Valerius, who was a man of great honour, engaged his word to the Plebeians, that if they would serve cheerfully upon this occasion, he would undertake the senate should reward them by quieting the contests relating to their debts, and granting whatever they could reasonably desire, and commanded at the same time that no citizen should be sued for debt during his administration. The people had so often experienced the publick virtue of the Valerian family, and no longer apprehensive of being again imposed upon, offered themselves in such crowds, that ten legions of four thousand men each were levied, the greatest army of natives the Romans had ever brought into the field. The dictator finished the campaign with glory, was rewarded with a triumph, and discharged the people from farther service. This step was not at all agreeable to the senate,[257] who feared the people would now claim the performance of the dictator’s promises. Their fears were just; for Valerius kept his word with the people, and moved the senate that the promise they had made to him might be taken into consideration. But the Appian faction opposed it with the utmost virulence, and exclaimed against his family as flatterers of the people, and introducers of pernicious laws. Valerius, finding his motion over-ruled, reproached the senate for their behaviour, and foretold the consequences which would attend it; and quitting the senate abruptly called assembly of the people. After he had thanked them for their fidelity and bravery, he informed them of the usage he had met with in the senate, and declared how greatly both he and they had been imposed upon, and resigning his office, submitted himself to whatever treatment the people should think proper. The people heard him with equal veneration and compassion, and attended him home from the forum with repeated acclamations. The Plebeians now kept no measures with the senate, but assembled openly, and consulted about seceding from the Patricians. To prevent this step, the senate ordered the consuls not to dismiss their armies, but to lead them out into the field, under pretence that the Sabines were again preparing for an invasion. The consuls left the city and encamped nearly together; but the soldiers, instigated by one Sicinnius Bellutus, seized the arms and ensigns to avoid violating their military oath, seceded from the consuls, and after they had appointed Sicinnius commander in chief, encamped on a certain eminence near the river Anio, which from that event was always termed the mons sacer, or the holy mountain.

When the news of this secession was brought to Rome, the confusion was so great, that the city had the appearance of a place taken by storm, and the Appian faction were severely reproached as the cause of this desertion. Their enemies at the same time making inroads up to the very gates of Rome, increased the general consternation, as the Patricians were terribly afraid they would be joined by the seceders. But the soldiers behaved with so much decency and moderation, that the senate after long debates sent deputies to invite them to return, with the promise of a general amnesty. The offer was received with scorn, and the Patricians were charged with dissimulation, in pretending ignorance of the just demands of the Plebeians, and the true cause of their secession. At the return of the deputies, the affair was again debated in the senate. Agrippa Menenius, a man respectable for his superior wisdom and thorough knowledge of the true principles of government, and who was alike an enemy to tyranny in the aristocracy, and licentiousness in the people, advised healing measures, and proposed to send such persons as the people could confide in with full power to put an end to the sedition in the manner they should judge most proper, without farther application to the senate. Manius Valerius, the last dictator, spoke next, and reminded the senate, “that his predictions of the evils which would result from their breach of promise were now verified, that he advised a speedy accommodation with the people, lest the same evils, if suffered to make a farther progress, should become incurable: that in his opinion the demands of the people would rise higher than the bare abolition of debts, and that they would insist upon such security as might be the firm guardian of their rights and liberty for the future. Because the late institution of the dictatorship had superseded the Valerian law which was before the only guardian of their liberty, and the late denial of a triumph to the consul Servilius, who had deserved that honour more than any man in Rome, evidently proved, that the people were deprived of almost all those privileges they had formerly enjoyed, since a consul and a dictator who showed the least concern for the interests of the people, were treated with abuse and ignominy by the senate: that he did not impute these arbitrary measures to the most considerable and respectable persons amongst the Patricians, but to a combination of proud and avaricious men wholly intent upon unwarrantable gain; who by advancing large sums at excessive interest, had enslaved many of their fellow-citizens, and by their cruel and insulting treatment of their unhappy debtors, had alienated the whole body of the Plebeians from the aristocracy: that these men, by forming themselves into a faction, and placing Appius, a known enemy to the people and abettor of the oligarchy, at their head, had under his patronage, reduced the commonwealth to its present desperate situation.” He concluded by seconding the motion of Menenius for sending ambassadours to put a speedy end to the sedition upon the best terms they should be able to obtain.

Appius, finding himself thus personally attacked, rose up and replied to Valerius in a hot inflammatory speech full of the most virulent invectives. He denied that he was ever guilty of enslaving his debtors: “he denied too, that those who had acted in that manner could be charged with injustice, since they had done no more than the laws allowed. He affirmed that the imputation of being an enemy to the people, and favouring oligarchy, arose from his steady adherence to the aristocracy, and equally affected all those of superior worth, who like him disdained to be governed by their inferiors, or to suffer the form of government which they had inherited from their ancestors[258] to deviate into the worst of all constitutions, a democracy. He recriminated upon Valerius, and charged him with aiming at tyranny, by courting the most profligate of the citizens, as the most effectual and shortest way of enslaving his country. He termed the seceders, vile, mean wretches, a thoughtless senseless multitude, whose present arrogance had been first inspired by that old man, as he contemptuously called Valerius. He declared absolutely against sending ambassadours, or making the least concession, and advised rather to arm the slaves and send for assistance from their allies the Latins, than submit to any thing that might derogate from the power and dignity of the Patricians. He proposed, if the seceders should appear in arms against them, to put their wives and children to death before their faces by the most severe and ignominious tortures. But if they would submit at discretion to the senate, he advised to treat them with moderation.” This speech produced a violent tumult in the senate, and the young Patricians who adhered to Appius behaved with so much insolence, that the consuls threatened to exclude them from the publick counsels, by a law which should fix the age for the qualification of every senator. Nothing was determined at that time, but in a few days, the moderate party, supported by the firmness of the consuls, prevailed against the still inflexible Appius, and ten ambassadours, at the head of whom were Menenius and Valerius, were sent with full powers to treat with the seceders. After many debates, Menenius in the name of the senate promised full redress of all their grievances with respect to the debts, and offered to confirm this promise by the solemn oaths of all the ambassadours. His offer was upon the point of being accepted, when Lucius Junius, who affected the surname of Brutus, a bold and able Plebeian, interposed and insisted upon such a security from the senate as might protect the Plebeians for the future from the power of their enemies, who might find an opportunity of wreaking their vengeance on the people for the step they had taken. When Menenius desired to know what security he required, Junius demanded leave for the people to choose annually a certain number of magistrates out of their own body, vested with the power of defending their rights and liberties, and protecting their persons from injury and violence. As this new and unexpected demand seemed of too great consequence to be granted by the ambassadours, Valerius with some others were sent to take the opinion of the senate upon that subject. Valerius laid this demand before the senate, and gave his opinion that the favour should be granted, and Appius, as usual, opposed it with outrageous fury. But the majority, determined at all events to put a period to the secession, ratified all the promises made by the ambassadours, and granted the desired security. The seceders held their assembly in the camp, and taking the votes by curiæ, elected five persons for their annual magistrates, who were termed tribunes of the people. By a law made immediately after the election, the persons of the tribunes were rendered sacred; and the people obliged themselves to swear by whatever was held most sacred that they and their posterity would preserve it inviolably.

The erection of the tribunitial-power, which happened about seventeen years after the expulsion of the kings, is certainly the æra from which the liberty of the Roman people ought properly to be dated. All the neighbouring states were at that time subject to aristocracy, where the people had little or no share in the government, and it appears evidently from the Roman historians that the Romans intended to establish the same form of government at Rome after the abolition of monarchy. For the senate, as Livy informs us,[259] gave a loose to that unbounded joy which the death of Tarquin inspired, and begun to oppress and injure the people, whom until that time they had courted with the utmost assiduity. But Sallust is more full and explicit. For he affirms,[260] “that after the expulsion of the kings, as long as the fear of Tarquin and the burdensome war with the Etrurians kept the Romans in suspense, the government was administered with equity and moderation. But as soon as ever the dread of those impending dangers was removed, the senate begun to domineer over the people and treat them as slaves; inflicting death or scourging after the arbitrary manner of despotick tyrants; expelling them from their lands, and arrogating the whole power of government to themselves, without communicating the least share of it to the Plebeians.” Thus the people, before the creation of this magistracy, were amused with the name of liberty, whilst in fact they had only changed the tyranny of one, for the more galling yoke of three hundred. But the tribunicial-power proved an invincible obstacle to the arbitrary schemes of the aristocratick faction, and at last introduced that due admixture of democracy, which is so essentially necessary to the constitution of a well regulated republick.

As a minute detail of a history so well known as that of the Romans would be quite superfluous, I shall only observe, that the democratick power in that republick did not arrive at its just state of independence, until the Plebeians were not only entitled to the highest posts and dignities, equally with the Patricians, but until the plebiscita or decrees made by the people in their assembly by tribes,[261] were confirmed to be equally binding as those made in their assembly by centuries. This law was first made when the tyranny of the decemvirs was abolished by the second secession of the people to the Sacred Mountain, but was perpetually violated by the over-bearing power of the aristocracy. But an event similar to that which occasioned the first secession of the people, to which they properly owed the origin of their liberty, was the cause of the third and last secession, which fully completed that liberty, and gave the fatal blow to the arbitrary aristocratick faction. Veturius, the son of Titus Veturius, who had been consul and died insolvent, borrowed a sum of money of one Plotius to defray the expenses of his father’s funeral. As the father was greatly indebted to the same Plotius, he demanded of young Veturius the payment of both debts which his father and he himself had contracted. As the unhappy young man was utterly unable to satisfy the demand, Plotius seized his unfortunate debtor, and confined him to the work of a slave, until he had discharged both principal and interest. Veturius bore his servitude with patience, and did his utmost to please his creditor. But as he refused to gratify the detestable passion of the infamous Plotius he treated him with the utmost inhumanity to force him to a compliance. One day he had the good fortune to escape out of the house of his merciless creditor, and fled to the forum, where he showed his back torn with stripes and his body covered with blood, and explained the reason of his shocking treatment. The people, enraged at so dreadful a spectacle, demanded an absolute security against that law, which gave the creditors such a shameful power over their insolvent debtors. For though that law had been abolished near forty years before upon a like occasion, yet the Patricians, by their superior power, had again revived it. The consuls reported the affair to the senate, who committed Plotius to prison, and ordered all those who were in custody for debt to be set at liberty. The Plebeians, not satisfied with these trifling concessions, insisted upon the absolute abolition of that inhuman law; but they were opposed with equal animosity by the Patricians. Despairing therefore of gaining their point by entreaties and remonstrances, they retired in a body to the Janiculum, resolutely determined never to enter the city, until they had received full satisfaction. The senate, alarmed at this secession, had recourse to their last resource in all desperate cases, the creation of a dictator. Q. Hortensius was nominated dictator upon this occasion, a man of great temper and prudence, and a real friend to liberty. As he was vested with absolute power by virtue of his office, he totally abolished that law which had given such just cause of uneasiness, and notwithstanding all the opposition of the senate, revived and confirmed two laws which had been formerly made, though constantly violated by the Patricians. One was, “that the decrees made by the Plebeians should be equally obligatory to the Patricians:” the other, “that all laws passed in the senate should be laid before the comitia, or assemblies of the people, either to be confirmed or rejected.” Thus the liberty, which the Plebeians had acquired by the first secession, was confirmed in the plainest and strongest manner by the last, which happened about two hundred and six years after. For the Patricians, from that memorable æra, had scarce any other advantage over the Plebeians, except what arose from their superior wealth, and that respect which is naturally paid by inferiors to men of superior birth.

It is evident, from that sudden change which the Plebeians experienced in the behaviour of the Patricians at the death of Tarquin, that if the senate could have supported themselves in that arbitrary power, which they so visibly aimed at, the condition of the people would have been just like that of the Polish peasants under their imperious lords. For in that detestable aristocracy, the Patricians, not content with the wealth of the republick, which centered chiefly in their own body, used their utmost efforts to engross the entire possession of the lands. The secession of the people, and the creation of the tribunes, defeated the scheme they had formed for establishing an aristocratick tyranny. But the frequent attempts to revive the Agrarian law prove undeniably that the Patricians never lost sight of their ambitious views of aggrandizing their families by an illegal usurpation of the conquered lands. Spurius Cassius, a Patrician, was the first author of this law, about eight years after the secession, with a view of raising himself to the regal power by conciliating the affection and interest of the people. The law itself was certainly just, and founded upon that equality in the distribution of the land, which was a part of the constitution, as settled by their founder Romulus. The plea therefore of Cassius, “that the lands, which had been conquered by the blood and valour of the people, should be taken from the rich and applied to the service of the publick,” was founded upon the strictest equity, as well as the fundamental principles of their constitution. Even Appius, the most inveterate enemy to the people, acknowledged the justice of his proposal, since he moved that commissioners should be appointed by the senate to fix the boundaries of the land in question, and sell, or let it out in farms for the benefit of the publick. This advice was unanimously approved of, and the senate passed a decree, that ten of the most ancient consular senators should be appointed commissioners to carry this scheme into execution. This decree at once pacified the people and ruined Cassius. For as he had proposed to divide two thirds of the lands between the Latins and Hernici, whose assistance he at that time courted, the people gave him up to the resentment of the senate, who condemned him for plotting to introduce a single tyranny, and ordered him to be thrown down the Tarpeian precipice.

This was the first rise of the famous agrarian law, which occasioned such frequent contests between the senate and the people, and stirred up the first civil war in Rome, which ended in the murder of both the Gracchi, about three hundred and fifty years after. For the senate not only evaded the nomination of the commissioners, as they had promised in their decree, but, whenever that affair was brought upon the carpet, they acted with an insincerity and artifice which are highly inconsistent with the so much vaunted probity of the Roman senate. Unless therefore we attend to the true reasons, upon which the agrarian law was originally founded, we can never form a right judgment of the perpetual dissensions between the senate and the tribunes upon that subject. For though the chief blame, in all these contests, is most commonly thrown upon the turbulent and seditious temper of the tribunes, yet, if the real cause of those dissensions is impartially examined, we shall find that most of them took rise from the avarice and injustice of the Patricians. But though the tribunitial power was sometimes made subservient to the interested views of some ambitious tribunes, yet no argument can justly be drawn from the abuse of that power against its real utility. For how much it was dreaded as the bulwark of the liberty of the people, is evident from this consideration: that it was reduced almost to nothing by Sylla, and afterwards totally absorbed by Augustus and the succeeding emperors, who never looked upon the people as thoroughly enslaved until they had annexed the tribunitial power to the imperatorial dignity.

I remarked before, that when the highest dignities and employments in the republick were laid open to the Plebeians, and the decrees of the people had the same force, and affected the Patricians in the same manner as those which were issued by the senate, the democratick power was raised to an equality with the aristocratick. But as a third power, or estate (as we term it) was wanting, capable of preserving the requisite æquilibrium between the other two, it was impossible from the very nature of the republican constitution, that the equality between the two powers could be long supported. The concessions made by Hortensius quieted indeed the civil dissensions; and it is remarkable too, that after peace was restored to the republick, the progress of the Roman conquests was so amazingly rapid, that in little more than two hundred years from that period they had subjugated the most opulent empires in the universe. But the same conquests, which raised the republick to the summit of her grandeur, threw too much weight into the democratick scale, and, by totally corrupting the Roman manners, brought on the final ruin of their liberty and constitution. For as every conquered province created successively a new government, these new dignities immediately became new objects of avarice and ambition. But as the command of the armies, the government of provinces, and the highest posts in the state, were disposed of by the suffrages of the people; the candidates for those lucrative employments left no means unattempted to secure a majority. Hence, as the poor Plebeians were extremely numerous, the man who was able to distribute the greatest largesses, or divert the mob with the finest shows, was generally the most successful. When the interest of the candidates was nearly equal, force was frequently made use of to decide the contest; and it was not uncommon to see the forum[262] covered with the slaughtered bodies of the electors. The generals who were elected fleeced the provinces to enable themselves to keep up their interest at home with the people, and connived at the rapines of their soldiers to secure their affections. Hence at Rome liberty degenerated into the most outrageous licentiousness, whilst the soldiers gradually wore off that parental love for their country, which was once the characteristick of the Romans, and attached themselves wholly to the fortunes of their generals. Hence the most succesful leaders began to look upon themselves no longer as servants, but as masters of the republick, and each endeavoured to support his pretensions by force of arms. The faction of Sylla and Marius filled the city alternately with slaughter and rapine, as the fortune of their respective leaders prevailed in the course of that destructive contest. And Rome frequently felt the calamitous effects of war in her own bowels, at a time when her victorious arms abroad were adding new provinces to her dominions. These factions were far from expiring with their leaders, but broke out again with the same baleful fury under the first and second triumvirate. Each of these, strictly speaking, were no more than coalitions of the same factions, where three chiefs united their several parties to crush every other. When they had accomplished this, and satiated their ambition, their avarice, and their private resentments, by the most bloody proscriptions, they quarrelled about the division of power, like captains of banditti about the division of booty, with whom they agreed in principle, and differed only in degree. These quarrels occasioned those civil wars, which gave the finishing blow to the Roman republick. The ablest and most dangerous man, in each triumvirate, proved at last the conqueror; and Julius Cæsar first put those chains upon his country, which Augustus riveted beyond a possibility of removal.